I think the best answer is *it depends*! One can make adjustments and changes to Win7 so it will be compatible with older software--but, a new install on a new HDD will probably not work with Ghost 2003, or 8x without making some changes. I suspect Ghost 11.x will be or has been updated to work with Windows Vista--and therefore will probably be compatible with Win7 also--but, I would definitely do testing on non-essential systems or extra HDDs first before relying on Ghost with my primary system!

Ghost 2003 and 8.x were designed with the old style Master Boot Tract in mind--i.e. the first 63 sectors of the HDD hold the Master Boot Tract. With the advent of Vista and now Win7--the Master Boot Tract is based on a different form--I think it's called being *cylinder aligned*, and is 2048 sectors long or something of this nature.

Both Vista and Win7 can be installed on systems that have the old style Master Boot Tract of 63 sectors if you use an old style partitioning/formatting tool first--and then the older Ghost programs can work okay with the newer Windows OSs. You probably have to do a BCD edit to make the newer Windows OSs act like the older WinXP--See this discussion: Ghost 2003/Ghost 8.2 and Windows Vista , especially starting here: reply #70!

Apparently Win7 installs a new boot partition if it is doing it's own partitioning/formatting on its own on a new HDD, *a 100 MB System Reserved Partition*--and older Ghost programs will be completely unaware of this new booting and partitioning structure!

This thread is informative--looks like the TeraByte's imaging products may be the better way to go in order to have better compatibility between Win7 and a currently available retail imaging program: Ghost 2003 and Windows 7 - No dual booting

From what I gather, most Win7 installations will boot with either MBR. For example, Win7 still boots after running fdisk /mbr or installing a standard MBR from several tools.

TeraByte Unlimited says...

Quote:

Windows 7 has tied the MBR code to the kernel loader such that a normal standard MBR may not allow Windows 7 to boot on certain machines. This option tells Image for DOS to use Windows 7 compatible MBR code as the standard MBR code.

I just had a look at a fresh Win7 install to unallocated space so a 100 MB SRP had been created. LBA-0 was the same as the above Win7 MBR and LBA-1 to LBA-63 were all zeros.

There was code in LBA-64 (yes 64, not 63) and beyond.

In BING, the start of the SRP was (CHS) 0 32 33 which is 2049 sectors.